Scientists have found further evidence to corroborate their claim of an extra planet in the outskirts of our solar system but the experts are taking chances on the celestial objects that cross the orbital path of Neptune to complete their journey around the Sun.
The idea of Planet Nine was first brought to the fore by Caltech’s Konstantin Batygin and Michael Brown in 2016.
Brown had also spotted a dwarf planet named Eris in 2006. They focused primarily on the trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) — objects far away from Sun than Neptune.
Some astronomers however, believe their discovery as an observational bias. To answer the criticism, they published a paper focused on low-inclination TNOs that don’t cluster.
“With this work, we looked at objects with long-period orbits but which also strongly interact with Neptune, specifically those that cross Neptune’s orbit,” Batygin told Space.
“We show that you can reject the scenario where this is all happening because of the galactic tides with an astonishing degree of statistical significance,” said Batygin, adding that “conversely, the Planet Nine scenario is perfectly compatible with the data.”
Batygin compared it to a football match, where Neptune is the goalkeeper. The galactic tides can shoot the TNOs but not to get them past the goalkeeper.
“What we see in the data are a bunch of footballs inside the goal,” said Batygin.
“It will test all of these gravitational lines of evidence with an independent new survey that is not subject to the same biases as the previous ones,” said Batygin.
“By virtue of its efficiency, maybe — just maybe — it will find Planet Nine,” said Batygin. “That would be pretty cool.”
The findings are yet to be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Dr. Thomas Hughes is a UK-based scientist and science communicator who makes complex topics accessible to readers. His articles explore breakthroughs in various scientific disciplines, from space exploration to cutting-edge research.
